Posts by Notas Badoff

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Re: Bias or not

Friend of a friend has a friend that insisted everyone must vote for Trump to bring on the Apocalypse. Because, y'no, the Trumpets of Doom. It was foretold! No, really. And it wasn't her idea to begin with.

(As much as possible I hide even the tenuous connection I have with Alabama.)

Benefits...

Everything the Chinese government does is with a view towards how it benefits China. Hmm, sounds okay...

But since the backdrop is a long-term historical perspective fostered by the government - obsessively - that the Western powers (oh, and Japan and others) have exploited China for centuries and ground down and impoverished its people, well, they don't really have fair-mindedness in mind, y'kno?

It is not a small leap to assume that everything the Chinese government does is with a view to exploit and belittle Western governments and businesses. After all, that *will* greatly satisfy their people (who have been fed a complete education for 3+ generations now on every historical transgression against China).

Ask yourself this: how would the average Chinese citizen react to hearing their government actually benefited a foreign company over one of their own? Outrage! (and as calculated by the party).

Until the mindset inculcated by the party allows for fair and equal business with and by foreign elements, expect nothing but "The East is Red Ink".

Icon

Ahh, this is a marketing ploy!

It just clicked. Every time I unbox some bit'o'kit, out falls a postcard or envelope to post to "register your product". I've always chucked those away as useless and with the downside that I'd start receiving _more_ unwanted postal advertising directly from manufacturers and resellers.

But Mark 85 has opened my eyes. If we all returned those registrations we could be posted warnings whenever a past purchase needed to be patched. If we also added email addresses the warnings could be timely! Isn't this just wonderful?

And given the frequent need for these notifications that would enable the added in advertising in these important communications. And with such engendered warm feelings for the caring and responsible manufacturers surely we would welcome each packet of love.

Speak!

No, just the return of "the data says what we want it to say, after we sculpt it into shape". Oh dear, let's put these two guys into a trial set of 'scientists' ranking them by 'stupidity' and see what happens when the result is "Chinese are more likely to be stupid scientists". I think a few of their colleagues might have a bone to pick or two. Skulls indeed.

Oh you funy man!

Gugle Trainslate

Try "金三胖" as I derived and then found elsewhere. Google Translate's equivalent to "have you powered it off and on" is to try to reverse translate. Sometimes you even discover it has dropped minor words like 'not' as is "I do not want you to shave my yak".

We've collected all this data and can say...

"Gotcha!"

Hmm, so maybe the idea could be to continue allowing this to be done, and after six months or a year, say to the shady advertisers "Okay, show us the figures of who you sold to / leased to / etc." And now that we've established an obvious pattern of discrimination, your fine / sentence will be this much.

't ain't entrapment if you do it to yourself.

Oooo, and then FB get to claim the high road, that they cooperated with society to squelch the ne'erdowells! (I've got my rose-colored glasses on)

Pride

Quick, how many languages were announced in each of the last five years? With "major industry backing" aka Google, Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla, AlsDeli, etc. (oEck, madly inadequate list)

This has been going on forever and the reasons why have always been more social than technical, prestige than practicality. Back in 60s Texaco Oil had their own programming language, TexTran. Because they needed a Texas-sized language?

I have to wonder if this all couldn't be summarized as "I'm going to win this campaign because my orcs have _six arms_ with blades for fingernails and eyes that shoot out porcupine quills! And they smell so bad everyone closer than 20 meters is incapacitated! And Gygax helped so I'll get the respect I deserve!"

Re: Espionage

"... looks like the Chinese population won't put up with ..." Good lord, you have quite mistaken things, haven't you? They never had a vote. They never will. What the party wants, the party gets.

And when establishing the structures of repression, how do you yet look enlightened? "six months" Sounds just fine, really. Later, after the next 'incident' that can be exploited, a year. Then the next after that (see the country is under attack!), two years. It is actually a mark of sophistication that appearances are taken into account from the beginning! Yay.

Everything done in China (that can be controlled) is required to be of benefit to China directly. Much of that is judged by how directly that is of benefit to the party. Appearances. If the party can crow that they have fostered technology to the point that Chinese-produced IT is world-quality, great. Since more and more will be required to be sourced from China, "... equipment from a list that has been government tested and approved" will provide the PR material, yes?

Basta!, buster and board alike

It sounds like 'disrepute' is accumulating on the EPO to the degree that the Administrative Council should fire Battistelli for that cause, shortly before they all resign for the same cause. They have all lost face.

They probably all know each other...

I've have to be the switchboard operator before, when an Indian publishing house wanted to contact "Notas Badof" and had lost their contact info, so just sent the email to the first address popping up on Google. Fortunately for them, I _had_ met that particular namesake a couple years before, from the subject matter knew it was for them, knew where they worked, and was able to triangulate down to their email address to forward the email.

I guess the Indian boyo figured that with such a strange name we'd all be from the same family?

Fog of war (put it in the 'cloud' bunker)

I was given the immediate impression of laziness on the part of Lockheed. It is a terrible lot of trouble to build applications that can be installed at customers' own sites. (That they then could control themselves) All those on-site visits and hassles when things don't work as advertised. Pfft!

Instead, let's just build a networked centralized system that we (LM) can run for you! Networked applications running somewhere else are all the rage, right? Hey, we can work into the marketing material a 'benefit' that everyone needs - OaaS ! Ownership is such a pain, we'll do it for you, wholesale prices!

Warning! Warning!

You know those signs they have on cars, like "Student Driver"? Hey, they're going to start selling signs to put on the roof "Experienced Driver". Whoa, stay outa the road, who knows what he might do?!?

Re: Re:drowssap

Ah yes, your codebook can be in plain sight on your shelves and no one would be the wiser! :)

Me, I'm going to switch to a password set suggested by something funny a friend said to me a couple decades ago, him from a different discipline to mine and using a language I don't know (he had to explain _why_ it was funny). Now how is a profiler going to guess that from perusing *my* emails?!

Re: Equality of Opportunity, not Attainment

Some of the negative aspects of the industry are not by any means new. And now that more people know about them, well even the kids will self-select earlier.

I keep a copy of "Soul of a new machine" for the times when someone mentions a child is "interested in computers as a field". It's a text that is both the best case for and against being 'interested'. If after reading it you are awed by the unique miracles you can create, you're 'our' kind of people and probably nothing could stop you from getting in on the action. On the other hand, if you are depressed at what happened to the individuals who toiled in the basement to produce the miracles, then it is a wake-up call and warning not to get involved in any way at all.

Enabling self-selection is a good thing. The last two kids reading my copy, one went into statistics and accounting, the other into submarining. I see two forms of intense stifling containment I couldn't imagine enduring. They see it as way better than what I do.

Sad sacks (the customers)

"... $35.5m of that package also be earmarked for return to customers in the form of discounts on accessories" Hot damn, now that's a settlement of real benefit to the customer!

They get to disown their previous misleading words, agree to make "less misleading" misleading words in the future, and atone by giving gouged customers useless vouchers? This watchdog accepts hushpuppies. There's no meat here!

Exfiltration by another means - http GET

So they manage to drop nasty bits o'code into your sausage grinding server, and wait to pluck out the juicy bits as the handle cranks the credit cards through. Their code caches the tasty morsels in a place they can reach any time they want, just by accessing the sales catalog. They *don't* have to re-access the server via the original networking backdoor (and which might leave tracks to trace back) since they've probably closed up the original vulnerability anyway cuz competition from other baddies.

A single access to break in, drop code and clean up tracks. Then they re-sample at will retrieving the latest data using plain and anonymous public web access. I am in awe. I'm off to go hide under the covers and wait for the cold sweats...

Worried about seizures?

Since the "Tired of fog? Try the frogs!" campaign illustrates that it is _possible_ for a government have "nous now", can we hope that some EU country will propose a special economic zone for IT companies, which combines both taxes and data in their definition of "none of our business"?

Relocate the headquarters to Luxembourg, say, and you've solved your monetary headaches and forever declared independence from arbitrary government interference. In fact, bull-headed short-sighted government actions may be cited in the future as the reason multinationals became supranationals, beyond any governments' control.

Which country do you think will be first to establish a SEIZ or SIIEZ?

The charming euphemism is rather obvious, appropriate both for the companies tired of being screwed in all the wrong ways, *and* the former host countries experiencing sudden turnabouts - SITZ

Why the torrent hate?

So I look all over and they just don't like torrents. FTP is good enough for anybody! Everybody who counts has great connections to suck down 2+GB 'overnight' with no troubles! Wah? Why the hate?

BTW: oh look, power cut off to home just now for a few seconds (twice) so 'net connection is strangely not continuous. _They_ have ideal lives - the rest of us are benighted blighters... How do they encourage newcomers?

OBTW: ElReg doesn't like href="ftp://..." so here's that link to images

Science with a bit of slight of hand

"... after acute exposure ..."

I had to scan through the report twice to answer (?) a simple question: how spread out was the exposure to this radiation? They keep talking about the long duration of exposure that a Mars transit would entail, and yet are not forthcoming about how they replicated that exposure. The above was the only mention I could find.

We say we're investigating X (because funding!) but we actually test Y (because easier!) and report results from the latter as though it said something definite about the former.

Here, let me give you a year's worth of sunlight in one flash, and check 30 days later how well you can see.

Slartibartfast Hovercraft

"At your service, sir!

Yes, combining fixed wake phrases with with 'pre-primed' Google/Bing searches could result in some really interesting political debates: "Ok Google, Trump as president" announces in every home "His biggest bankruptcy yet!"

Aside: Instead of just walking up and just saying "tea", did Jean-Luc always crisply specify "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot" because just saying 'tea' would then prompt for "what's the second letter?", and asking for 'chamomile' would get him a cup with a green chameleon?

Make me proud, media

I scanned through the article's links, and none to past articles in the Reg about Alex Stamos at time of leaving. What was said? What was known? Were the usual 'family' reasons satisfying enough that no one cared to check into it more? Anybody know of previous hints to this mischief?

Re: Despair

I'm using this election as a worst-case benchmark - what proportion of people are simply irremediably stupid/antisocial/uncaring in voting.

My thought until now has been that about 1/3 of the people will always vote Republican just'cuz daddy did and about 1/3 of the people will always vote Democrat cuz'justice! Thus there really is just a small middle portion of the voters that can actually be influenced.

Now take away those that will vote based on some cutesy sound-bite like "I'm a uniter, not a divider" and you realize everything hinges on maybe a fifth to a sixth of people who can be influenced *rationally*.

Hell, there are even people who _will_ vote for a candidate that can't think of a single foreign leader!! And *they* swear they are the *most* rational!

I think America ought to take out the part of the constitution that says a candidate for president must be native-born. America desperately needs to import brains!

"I'm sorry, boss, but network security ...

won't let you start up the quarterly video conference with Wall Street. You'll just have to send them an email about how secure our network is. Sorry about your bonus benchmarked to stock price..."

"He emphasised how, once installed, it learns how the client’s network operates over a period of two to three weeks and then act on unusual activity from there."

Two to three weeks to learn about daily behaviours and weekend reconciliations. Two to three months to learn about the once-a-month activities, that are spread throughout each month. Two to three quarters to learn about the quarterly activities. Two to three years to learn about yearly activities (vacations, holidays, a coupl'a industry conferences, tax reporting, product rollouts, merger bids, etc.)

And then after two three years it'll be ready to notice the merely new coming in and old falling away. Things which change every week.

If you don't staff these automatic tools with 24x7 attendants well-versed in all company activities, they will constantly be tripping up business activities or flipping off alerts. Where's the big red button for the automatic monitor that keeps hitting the big red button?

Re: If companies had not given out IP's like candy.....

'bout 10 years ago I was in a meeting where the network people had done their homework and were able to successfully propose that the company could give up its class B Internet blocks (plural) and manage the whole network with two class A blocks. 5 digit intranet counts and rising. Oh, and increase network security because everything would have to go through the best centralized net boxen to be had. If you had a clue and looked ahead it was easy to benefit both your own company and everybody else.

'twas also the meeting where the CIO, after some time listening to the discussion, interjected "What's a class B address?" After a *very* long period of quiet, the nicest guy there answered succinctly and kindly. CIO didn't last another month, though.

Re: I can understand a little bit of bias

Indeed, the examples of what is 'Asian' are definitely needed for clarity. As I read the detailed complaint, Dept of Labor don't seem to qualify 'Asian' at all . That's really annoying.

Given the current geopolitical realities, heck given the recent convictions and cases made against certain national actors, there is going to be a higher bar for specific nationalities. Sorry folks, we're not all just folk.

"For the Software Engineer position, from a pool of more than 1,160 qualified applicants -- approximately 85% of whom were Asian -- Palantir hired 14 non-Asian applicants and only 11 Asian applicants. The adverse impact calculated by OFCCP exceeds five standard deviations."

"For the QA Engineer Intern position, from a pool of more than 130 qualified applicants -- approximately 73% of whom were Asian -- Palantir hired 17 non-Asian applicants and only four Asian applicants. The adverse impact calculated by OFCCP exceeds six standard deviations."

That's going to be really really hard to 'normalize'.

Hmm, could they plead customer requirements? That the positions where for particular projects were the 'customer' specified really high security? PDF mentions lots of non-discrimination points. Could the company interject 'security' as an overriding consideration?

Startups: People + Idea + Timing + Reality = WTF happened?!?

First startup: guy with an astonishing insight plus guy with an astonishing checkbook get together with visions of multiple astonishing checkbooks. One drawback is the insight has a limited shelf life of about 18 months. I come in and find that project step 2 is really steps 2 thru 7, with step 5 being find the magic data transform that 'corrects' the 'minor' hardware signal distortion introduced between encoding and decoding. Wavelets! smart guy says. Great, I says, we have a first tier university nearby full of Math/EE/CS genius wannabe students that would really chew through this 'minor' problem for nearly no money! No, let's bring in an "industry expert" they say. Months later I quit with much denario unpaid to me.

They never understood the biggest problem was timing and execution. The incorrect kind of hurry is fatal.

Second startup: called in to help out a friend with their software demo for prospective investors. Later find out they'd spent lots on two other 'friends' that simply disappeared after a month and a half, thus emergency call to me. (Yah, thanks) Much work, time, and repeated demos later, number two decides he can't take the heat with no fuel coming in. A group conference finds number two never put in any money, number one has been funding the whole deal, and - ya'know - nobody wants to fund development of a porn blocker. For some reason, no upstanding citizens or organizations (who are most vocally against porn) want to be materially associated with the subject. They're a'gin it, but don't want it to go away??

Some technologies are nerd-perfect, and fly smack into the brick wall of reality. Make sure your startup idea will fly in the *real* world.

Re: This sounds a bit odd.

And the Pacific theatre. Turns out training the next pilots is crucial.

The Japanese had two problems: they hadn't enough well-trained experienced pilots after a short while because they kept dying valiantly, and they hadn't a chance of training new pilots because of the first problem. After some time of everyone wanting to be heroes at the front, there were no trainers for the last 2-3 years of the war. No trainers, no more pilots, no air cover, no victory conceivable.

After reading that I finally understood why the services in the West would keep sending their bona fide aces back home. Hey, yes, bond rallies and such on the weekends, but also because training the next pilots was absolutely *vital* to winning a war.

Which countries/services now have enough manpower depth to suck up damage and *replace* the damage? Hey, nobody is even ready to build unmanned drones that fast, much less put enough controllers in seats that don't have rockets under them!

Sorry

When I saw your message shortly after posting, I thought to myself "maybe I should post asking why there's no icon for "Don't kill the messenger!"" Now I'm sorry I didn't. Some people are so instantly angry they splat the 'splainer.

Re: Don't worry... But paranoia is quite justified.

All you need is continuous access to the dozen cameras that every autonomous driverless car will have recording everything that happens anywhere that cars can go. Who needs to pay for the extra gas for a police plane/helicopter when Joe Public's car will easily rat out Jill Public's getaway from that bank robbery. Or whatever is the crime du heure, three weeks later.

We *really* need to get into the mode of starting with every dystopian scifi misanthropy ever imagined, and ask "how are we going to stop that from happening?" Because the current method of attempting to react belatedly to the "who knew they would do that?" just isn't going to work. All those bad things will become true unless we actively, oh damn, *proactively*, guard against them.

Relating to the outside world

It is when Microsoft's world and the real world interact that we find out how narrow and small is Microsoft's understanding of, or experience with, the real world. Way back when it was considered by them a negative if you had any experience with other operating systems or non-native toolsets. I think that must still be true. This is self-inflicted, just like stack ranking. Very sad. Very predictable.

Re: English is schön

Ah yes, the 'automatic' workarounds to compensate for the knowledge-impaired knowledge workers. I automatically replace the umlauts with their by-ASCII-convention equivalents, because of numerous past hassles. 'oe', 'ae', 'ue', usw. Hey, longer passwords are supposed to be better, yes?

Re: already fixed

Re: Could be useful...

The phone operators will love being able to report you saying that. It ensures their jobs. Much like the reversing ebb tide as local-lish-speaking phone service centers are picking up employees as customers ask for someone they can understand and be understood by.

Re: just asking

Re: Cats and bags

We want the ability to shove any code we wish onto your PCs/phones without interference. Soon we will restrict the security updates you receive until we are assured we have "equal access" via newer exploits.

We don't need government-mandated backdoors installed, we're just going to make sure we have all the 'unofficial' backdoors enabled.

Soothing explanations

"The Central Ohio Urology Group says it will take several weeks before its investigation will be complete and the full scope of the incident known."

Oh yeah, the "that stone will soon progress down the ureter all by itself, and we don't have to hurry things up..."

Said to the friend who'd already quite convinced them of the need for morphine due to the extreme pain involved (and which produces distinctive recognizable reactions because *every* nerve in your body is on fire!)

Known risks with quantifiable outcomes

Ralph Nader and his advocates still claim they did not influence the 2000 election results, Bush winning. Bush then killed 4500 US troops and countless other people unsuccessfully working out his oedipal flaws.

The US election system stinks but that's the voting landscape to be negotiated. Don't step in the dog turds. A vote for Stein, Johnson, or Harambe *is* a vote for Trump.

And as for the repeated claims that congress/senate/DOD/states would obstruct any Trump stupidity, so that it doesn't matter what idiot gets elected president, see Bush et al. Oh, and the recent wailing "I didn't think my vote would count!"

No, just don't

"They will be missing out on seven years of Microsoft's efforts to improve security and performance, but the extra risk is hard to quantify."

I was reminded just yesterday how much I loathe the MS attitude.

"We have to update with fixes, choose a convenient time." Mmm, kay, I'm real busy so how about 2 days from now. "We tried to install fixes, but the update didn't work. Reschedule?" ?!?!, kay, but I'm still real busy, so how about... WHY are the date and time controls grayed out? I can't pick when?You're going to reboot in an hour no matter what the owner of the PC wants?

It's the attitude, people. Microsoft has _earned_ the undying hatred of millions. And they just don't understand why. Think about that last part. They have lost that there is a relationship between customer and vendor. I didn't leave them, they left me.